


deadwood

by livepoultryfreshkilled



Category: House of Lies
Genre: As It Should, BPD Clyde Oberholt, Character Study, Doug Hug Emporium, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, OCD Clyde Oberholt, OPEN FOR BUSINESS BABY!, POV Second Person, THERE ARE NO FUCKING FICS FOR THESE TWO. enraging, briefly, dare i say, gay clyde oberholt, hes fucked up what else do u want me to say, i said it., literally just coping via clyde oberholt house of lies, my body is shutting down, that actually applies to every single one of my fics, these morons. these buffoons, things i write instead of being honest with my therapist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:26:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27488035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livepoultryfreshkilled/pseuds/livepoultryfreshkilled
Summary: Clyde Oberholt doesn't float.
Relationships: Doug Guggenheim/Clyde Oberholt
Comments: 14
Kudos: 28





	deadwood

**Author's Note:**

> clyde oberholt go to therapy. gayass

_ The air was thick with tension. _

That’s what people say, when it’s true. Sometimes when it isn’t.  _ The air was thick with tension. _ That means it’s hard to breathe, because someone is either too close or too far away and the blood rushing to your head is giving you vertigo.  _ The air was thick with tension. _ That means the passion is generating heat particles that fill up the room, making everybody hot and sweaty, sticky with emotion.  _ The air was thick with tension. _ That’s what writers say when they’re about to make somebody fuck, or kill, or scream. Sex and violence are the only things that make money anymore, and thank God for that, or you’d be homeless.

But this time the air isn’t thick with tension. No, not in this shitty motel room, on this Sunday, in this year of our lord 2012 AD: it’s  _ sick _ with it. Like tension is a tumor and the air is some bald dying kid who’s not gonna make it to his Make-A-Wish trip to Disneyland. Like tension is a fungus, and the air is a tree that’s rotting from the inside out, its bare, jagged branches snaking across the sky, outstretched in some silent plea for mercy. Clawing at the blue, begging for its life. 

No, tension is not a gunshot, it’s carbon monoxide: you never know about it until it’s too late. Silent but deadly. It makes you sick, it makes you dizzy, you’re gonna throw up from all this fucking  _ tension, _ from all the disease in your veins. All the dirt from this room coating the inside of your lungs. This tension has knobby knees and spindly fingers that are much too long, its limbs are rail-thin but its bones never break, no matter how hard you try. And it’s killing you. It’s always been killing you, both of you, maybe as long as you’ve known each other, maybe longer. 

Clyde must have been dying for years now, he realizes.

Doug furrows his eyebrows. “You look tense.”  _ Ha. _

Clyde says nothing. Doug says nothing back. He knows Doug has never been afraid of dying. Doug has never been afraid of being an idiot, either. Maybe because he knows that both of those fates are inevitable. Inescapable. Death and idiocy are the two things that keep existence from becoming, by definition, a prison, but no one ever tells them thank-you. No one appreciates their hard work.

_ Inescapable. _ Now that is a puke-green word. Clyde Oberholt could use an escape right about now: the stench of the dust and mold caked into the duvet cover makes him feel nauseous, and he can hear the spiders in the corners of the walls, he can imagine them crawling into his mouth and nose while he sleeps. He is tense, Doug’s right. Doug is right about a lot of things, and Clyde will always do his best to make sure he never finds out about them. 

“Clyde?” Doug reaches his hand closer towards him on the bed. His hand is clean, soft-looking (Clyde doesn’t have to look, he knows it’s soft) somehow bright, stark against the rough and dirty comforter. He is tentative: his voice so genuine and gentle that it can’t help but wake up that white-hot ball of  _ something _ that lives in Clyde's chest. 

Doug is always stoking that fire inside him, Clyde isn’t sure if he does it on purpose. When it’s roaring it drives him a little crazy, actually; he doesn’t feel that way about anything else. It turns Clyde into a dragon, and it hurts to feel the scales push through his skin but it’s worth it because it’s only when he spreads his leathery wings that he feels free, the only time in his whole life. It’s a miracle, it’s a fairy tale: someone finally coaxed him out of his cave. 

Clyde used to think it was rage, that fire, or at least annoyance. But it’s not, he knows that now, no matter how hard he tries to forget it. He knows it’s not the angry red irritation that covers the inside of his skin like eczema, he knows why this fire is different from all other fires. He knows, because it feels good. It hurts a lot, too much, but it puts feeling back into his frostbitten extremities. The pins and needles make him ache but it’s good, it’s so good, it’s too fucking good and it’s giving him a fever.

“Clyde?” Doug repeats, still inching closer. He’s much too nonthreatening to spark this kind of fear.

_ “Doug?” _ Clyde mocks him, but it comes out wrong, it comes out honest, it comes out raw and a little scratchy. The corners of Clyde’s mouth are turned down, but not unkindly. More like he couldn’t bear to hold them up anymore. Atlas shrugged. Clyde mocks Doug, belittles him, because cold is not  _ cold, _ but really just the absence of heat. And Clyde is coldest when that memory of warm skin is fresh in his mind. Clyde mocks Doug, because Doug is the most important person in Clyde’s life. Clyde mocks Doug, and he doesn’t know why.

Sometimes Clyde wonders what their relationship would be like if he was nicer to Doug. Would Doug stick around, still? Or would he run for the hills once the Stockholm syndrome wears off? Clyde doesn’t risk it, won’t, can’t: he must be allergic to loss, because thinking about Doug walking away makes him itch so badly his skin burns.

(Blame it on your skin, blame it on your father, blame it on your God, but by God, Clyde Oberholt, you know exactly what is rotting your brain. You know the worm that made all those holes in your heart by name. You know why your soul doesn’t hold up under a blacklight. 

Blame bad lungs on karma, blame bad luck on genetics, blame all that fear and loathing of your reflection in the autopsy table on the corpse. Point the finger, pass the buck, unhook the belt and put it around your neck. Choke yourself on your self-pity; auto-erotic asphyxiation. Snort those little white lines of mother’s love off of a bathroom counter all alone, count every pill of survivor’s guilt before you swallow. 

You know what you are. You know what you are. You know what you are, and you’ll die before you say it. I’m the zombie that’s still breathing, that feels the flesh as it rots off. I’m the victim and the perpetrator, I’ll beg myself for mercy but never grant it. I know what I am. I know what you are. Look yourself in the eye, Clyde Oberholt!  _ Guilty, guilty, guilty!) _

“If you’re going to be that way, I’m going to leave,” Doug says, shocking Clyde out of his small trance like the bang of a gavel. He says he’s going to leave, and Clyde knows he won’t. Sometimes, the motels in the towns they stay in are overbooked; sometimes, there’s only one bed; but everytime, every single time, Doug stays. Everytime, they are both too stubborn to sleep on a cot, and everytime, they will not talk about it. If there is one thing Clyde is good at, it’s not talking about things. Sometimes, he wishes he was worse at it.

“No, I’m—I’m sorry, I’m being an ass,” Clyde does his own version of reaching across the bed. “I’m fine, man. Just,” he lies, sad smiling, weight of the world firmly back on his shoulders, “tired. I’m just fucked up cause I’m tired. It was a long day.”  _ It wasn’t, but it was; every day Clyde Oberholt drags his carcass across this earth is a long day. _

“Oh.” Clyde tries not to flinch at how surprised Doug sounds at his apology. Clyde feels like a monster a lot of the time. He’s surprised when he can still see his own reflection. “Okay.” Doug bites his lip, like he’s considering how to say something without setting Clyde off. 

“Do you want a hug?”

Clyde doesn’t cringe. He doesn’t laugh. He feels the tension snap, not violently, more like an old rubber band. Something inside him snaps, too. A release. A relief. 

“Whatever, man.” Clyde wonders if he’ll ever be able to ask for what he wants.

Doug smiles anyway, too bright in proportion to how small the crumb is, and scooches down to the end of the bed where Clyde is sitting. He always comes to him, and he doesn’t seem to mind, but you never know. One of these days, Clyde resolves, he’s going to try to come to him. But then Doug wraps Clyde up in his strong arms, and Clyde feels the chills roll through him, feels his whole body going limp. Like he’s a marionette, and somebody just cut all his strings. Clyde rests his face, his body, his whole life in the hands of Doug Guggenheim. No one’s watching, no one knows, Doug won’t tell anyone, either. Clyde thinks that this is what being loved would feel like. He doesn’t think he’ll ever know for sure.

Clyde isn’t sure how long they sit there for, Doug holding his body, propping up that deadweight like it means something to him. Clyde thinks absently of the scene at the beginning of the Lion King, where Simba curls up next to the dead body of his father, begging it to wake up. He imagines how Doug would react if he died, right there. Would he let go of him? Would he scream, dropping Clyde to the floor in horror? Or would Doug just cling tighter and beg for Clyde to wake up, knowing he never would?

Clyde doesn’t have to wonder what he would do if the situation was reversed.

“Clyde?” Doug asks, gently nudging him. He doesn’t knock him away, just jostles him, in case Clyde had fallen asleep. Insanely, Clyde thinks he could; there’s something about Doug that makes him feel like he could be safe if he passed out in his arms. Maybe even safer than if he stayed awake.

“Mm.”

“Do you want to watch a movie? I think this place has HBO.” Clyde snorts.

“I seriously doubt,” he mumbles into Doug’s shoulder, “that this shithole has HBO.”

Clyde is wrong. He doesn’t mind in the slightest. Clyde wants to watch The Haunting, Doug wants to watch American Pie, but they somehow end up watching The Talented Mr. Ripley. Clyde tries not to look into how Doug, chronic movie-talker, says absolutely nothing. He says nothing especially loudly at all the moments where Ripley looks at another man like a psychopath would, like he’s raw meat, ready to be cooked. Clyde pretends that’s what he’s doing, anyway, because if he thinks too hard a blood vessel in his brain will explode and he’ll die. Doug gradually ends up leaning into Clyde, and Clyde, even more gradually, ends up leaning back. Their legs don’t touch under the blanket, but the heat radiating off of them does.  _ This is just another thing, _ Clyde decides, as he does his best to ignore the TV and how warm Doug is lying next to him,  _ that we will not talk about. _

-

When you were 8 years old they cut down a 200 year old tree that used to be in front of your apartment complex. It was big and tall, and it always made you feel warm, like when you’re so lonely and untethered so you sit next to a kind-looking stranger on the subway just to feel them breathe next to you. You cried when they cut it down, screamed, begged them to stop with all your 8 year old heart. You cried because your mother told you it was 200 years old, because it had been there so long and protected you from sun and snow and sleet, and you felt like you owed it to that old tree. (That Norweigan maple, you’ll always remember that it was a Norweigan maple. You think it deserves that, the memory of its species, its family. You think it would do the same for you.) You cried because you didn’t want things to go away, to change, you never have and probably never will be able to properly let anything go. (That’s why you’re so long now, Clyde, you won’t let go of anything so you got all stretched out. That’s why your fingers ache, because you clenched your fist too hard for too long and your bones weren’t ready when it finally slipped away.) You cried because 4 big men in a loud truck were cutting down a tree your mother used to put her hand on, palm flat and fingers splayed, sending love through the bark and getting love back. You cried because you were 8 years old and it was loud and scary and you were sad. Your father smacked you on the back of your head for crying and told you not to be a girl. He left, again, two days later. You didn’t cry for him like you did for that tree.

You found out that they cut it down because it was dead, it had been for years. The wood was dead, it was dead, a natural death, of old age. Inevitable. Inescapable. And you will always remember what the stump looked like, how you could see the deadwood, see the part that wasn’t rotted but you still knew it didn’t have a soul anymore. There are times when you want to be sawed down, cut to the stump, so someone can count your rings and see how long ago you started only  _ pretending _ to be alive. And the tree looked so alive to you, green leaves glistening, that you didn’t believe them at first. You assume that’s what everyone will think when they peel back your knotted bark.

The men sawing down the tree were so nice, they cut off a piece of the tree for you after they saw how hard you and your mother cried. You kept that in your room, you keep it in your apartment now; you have so much  _ shit _ in your apartment, Clyde, because you won’t let go. You won’t let go, you can’t let go, because you’re not weighing the balloon down as much as it’s weighing you down. You know that if you loosen that grip, you’ll be the one to float away first, because you won’t let go. 

You’re a hoarder, Clyde Oberholt, piles of old books you haven’t read and will never read stacked to the ceiling, old clothes kept for sentimentality’s sake, even though you don’t remember what they’re supposed to make you sentimental for. You’re a hoarder, you’ve never deleted a phone number in your life, all the clutter in your house and in your heart and in your childhood bedroom is going to topple one day and bury you alive. And you’re a shockingly dedicated hoarder for someone so claustrophobic, maybe that’s why your body tries to hoard air when you feel walls closing in on you. And you feel a shockingly profound heartbreak for someone who has never been in love. Never been in love with a  _ woman. _ You’ve loved things that aren’t women, you’ve loved trees, and books, and clothes, and you won’t mention the other thing that you have loved because it’s probably what makes it hard for you to breathe. Your house looks neat and minimalist because you know how to lock your closets. What that says about you goes without saying.

When you were 8 years old you went to sleep and stopped breathing. Sometimes you’re not sure you ever started again. Your mother had to wake you up and then she had to spend a month’s salary on treatment for sleep apnea. You felt bad about that then and you still do, you always feel bad, sometimes you can’t even remember what for. You are just a bunch of shame and guilt and anger and fear in the shape of a man, but they still couldn’t get the lungs right. They couldn’t get the arms right, either, or the nose, or the ears, they didn’t get anything right but at least now you can pretend the sound of your CPAP machine is someone in bed with you because above all you are afraid of being alone.

-

Clyde is not alone now. Clyde does not have his CPAP machine. If he stops breathing tonight, it is up to fate and luck and God and Doug to make sure he starts again. And the last part, the  _ Doug _ of it all, makes him forget to feel that sickly sweet hope that maybe no one makes sure he starts again.

  
_ It must be so terrible, _ Clyde thinks as he looks at Doug, whose face is smushed against his shoulder, big arms and hands all over him in a way sleep excuses.  _ It must be so terrible,  _ Clyde thinks as he gently, delicately removes Doug’s glasses, askew on his nose.  _ It must be so terrible, _ Clyde thinks as he lets himself drift off to the sound of Doug snoring so softly,  _ It must be so terrible to sleep alone.  _

**Author's Note:**

> im livepoultryfreshkilled on tumblr! if you leave kudos we're kissing and if you leave a comment its with tongue


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